Avaliação tecnológica de painéis MDF de madeira de Eucalyptus grandis confeccionados em laboratório e em linha de produção industrial

MDF panels of Eucalyptus grandis wood fibers were made in either experimentally in a laboratory or on an industrial production line. In order to analyze the influence of the production condition, the anatomical, physical and mechanical properties of the panels were determined. The wood refining induced the transversal rupture of the transversal fiber wall. The MDF panels obtained from the industrial production line presented less swelling in thickness and absorption values and improved mechanical properties in the requirements of bending strength, module of elasticity and surface resistance. For laboratory MDF panels, it was possible to verify a statistically significant correlation between bending strength and module of elasticity, medium density and internal bond and swelling in thickness and absorption. This tendency was also true for the MDF panels obtained in real conditions of production, however without statistical significance. By comparing the quality properties of MDF panels produced in the laboratory with those obtained in real conditions of production, it was sought to standardize the established variables for obtaining panels on a small scale, as well to make possible the safe transfer and divulgation of information obtained in the laboratory.

Short-term nutritional counseling reduces body mass index, waist circumference, triceps skinfold and triglycerides in women with metabolic syndrome

Background: It is recognized that the growing epidemic of metabolic syndrome is related to dietary and lifestyle changes. Objective: The purpose of this study was to evaluate short-term application of nutritional counseling in women with metabolic syndrome. Methods: This follow-up study was conducted from September to November 2008 with thirty three women >= 35 years old screened clinically for nutritional counseling. Dietary intake was reported, and biochemical and body composition measures were taken at baseline and after three months of follow-up. Results: Of the 33 women evaluated, 29 patients completed the study. The prevalence of type 2 diabetes mellitus, hypertension, dyslipidemia, and obesity was high at 38%, 72.4%, 55.2%, and 75.8%, respectively. At the end of three-months of follow-up, a significant decline in body mass index, waist circumference, triceps skinfold, and triglycerides was observed, as was an increase in calcium and vitamin D intake. The multiple regression analysis showed that changes in body mass index, triceps skinfold, waist circumference and triglyceride levels after nutritional intervention were positively associated with changes in anthropometric (loss of body weight) and biochemical (decrease of TG/HDL-c ratio) parameters. Moreover, waist circumference changes were negatively associated with changes in calcium and vitamin D intake. Conclusion: Short-term nutritional counseling improved some factors of metabolic syndrome. Moreover, the increases in calcium and vitamin D consumption can be associated with the improvement in markers of metabolic syndrome.

Myocardial ultrasonic tissue characterization in patients with thyroid dysfunction

Background: Structural myocardial abnormalities have been extensively documented in hypothyroidism. Experimental studies in animal models have also shown involvement of thyroid hormones in gene expression of myocardial collagen. This study was planned to investigate the ability of ultrasonic tissue characterization, as evaluated by integrated backscatter (IBS), to early identify myocardial involvement in thyroid dysfunction. Patients and Methods: We studied 15 patients with hyperthyroidism (HYPER), 8 patients with hypothyroidism (HYPO), 14 patients with subclinical hypothyroidism (SCH) and 19 normal (N) subjects, who had normal LV systolic function. After treatment, 10 HYPER, 6 HYPO, and 8 SCH patients were reevaluated. IBS images were obtained and analyzed in parasternal short axis (papillary muscle level) view, at left ventricular (LV) posterior wall. The following IBS variables were analyzed: 1) the corrected coefficient (CC) of IBS, obtained by dividing IBS intensity by IBS intensity measured in a rubber phantom, using the same equipment adjustments, at the same depth; 2) cardiac cyclic variation (CV) of IBS - peak-to-peak difference between maximal and minimal values of IBS during cardiac cycle; 3) cardiac cyclic variation index (CVI) of IBS - percentual relationship between the cyclic variation (CV) and the mean value of IBS intensity. Results: CC of IBS was significantly larger (p < 0.05) in HYPER (1.57 +/- 0.6) and HYPO (1.53 +/- 0.3) as compared to SCH (1.32 +/- 0.3) or N (1.15 +/- 0.27). The CV (dB) (HYPO: 7.5 +/- 2.4; SCH: 8.2 +/- 3.1; HYPER: 8.2 +/- 2.0) and the CVI (HYPO: 35.6 +/- 19.7%; SCH: 34.7 +/- 17.5%; HYPER: 37.8 +/- 11.6%) were not significantly different in patients with thyroid dysfunction as compared to N (7.0 +/- 2.0 and 44.5 +/- 15.1%). Conclusions: CC of IBS was able to differentiate cardiac involvement in patients with overt HYPO and HYPER who had normal LV systolic function. These early myocardial structural abnormalities were partially reversed by drug therapy in HYPER group. On the other hand, although mean IBS intensity tended to be slightly larger in patients with SCH as compared to N, this difference was not statistical significant.

COOP/WONCA Charts as a Screen for Mental Disorders in Primary Care

PURPOSE most people with mental disorders receive treatment in primary care. The charts developed by the Dartmouth Primary Care Cooperative Research Network (COOP) and the World Organization of National Colleges, Academies, and Academic Associations of General Practitioners/Family Physicians (WONCA) have not yet been evaluated as a screen for these disorders, using a structured psychiatric interview by an expert or considering diagnoses other than depression. We evaluated the validity and feasibility of the COOP/WONCA Charts as a mental disorders screen by comparing them both with other questionnaires previously validated and with the assessment of a mental health specialist using a structured diagnostic interview. METHODS We trained community health workers and nurse assistants working in a collaborative mental health care model to administer the COOP/WONCA Charts, the 20-item Self-Reporting Questionnaire (SRQ-20), and the World Health Organization Five Well-Being Index (WHO-5) to 120 primary care patients. A psychiatrist blinded to the patients' results on these questionnaires administered the SCID, or Structured Clinical Interview for the DSM-IV (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition). RESULTS The area under the receiver operating characteristic curve was at least 0.80 for single items, a 3-item combination, and the total score of the COOP/WONCA Charts, as well as for the SRQ-20 and the WHO-5, for screening both for all mental disorders and for depressive disorders. The accuracy, sensitivity, specificity, and positive and negative predictive values of these measures ranged between 0.77 and 0.92. Community health workers and nurse assistants rated the understandability, ease of use, and clinical relevance of all 3 questionnaires as satisfactory. CONCLUSIONS One-time assessment of patients with the COOP/WONCA Charts is a valid and feasible option for screening for mental disorders by primary care teams.

Condylar displacement between centric relation and maximum intercuspation in symptomatic and asymptomatic individuals

Objective: To measure condylar displacement between centric relation (CR) and maximum intercuspation (MIC) in symptomatic and asymptomatic subjects. Materials and Methods: The sample comprised 70 non-deprogrammed individuals, divided equally into two groups, one symptomatic and the other asymptomatic, grouped according to the research diagnostic criteria for temporomandibular disorders (RDC/TMD). Condylar displacement was measured in three dimensions with the condylar position indicator (CPI) device. Dahlberg's index, intraclass correlation coefficient, repeated measures analysis of variance, analysis of variance, and generalized estimating equations were used for statistical analysis. Results: A greater magnitude of difference was observed on the vertical plane on the left side in both symptomatic and asymptomatic individuals (P = .033). The symptomatic group presented higher measurements on the transverse plane (P = .015). The percentage of displacement in the mesial direction was significantly higher in the asymptomatic group than in the symptomatic one (P = .049). Both groups presented a significantly higher percentage of mesial direction on the right side than on the left (P = .036). The presence of bilateral condylar displacement (left and right sides) in an inferior and distal direction was significantly greater in symptomatic individuals (P = .012). However, no statistical difference was noted between genders. Conclusion: Statistically significant differences between CR and MIC were quantifiable at the condylar level in asymptomatic and symptomatic individuals. (Angle Orthod. 2010;80:835-842.)

Avaliação de modelos geoidais gravimétricos determinados com funções covariâncias planas e esféricas (Estudo de Caso: Estado de São Paulo e adjacências)

The least squares collocation is a mathematical technique which is used in Geodesy for representation of the Earth's anomalous gravity field from heterogeneous data in type and precision. The use of this technique in the representation of the gravity field requires the statistical characteristics of data through covariance function. The covariances reflect the behavior of the gravity field, in magnitude and roughness. From the statistical point of view, the covariance function represents the statistical dependence among quantities of the gravity field at distinct points or, in other words, shows the tendency to have the same magnitude and the same sign. The determination of the covariance functions is necessary either to describe the behavior of the gravity field or to evaluate its functionals. This paper aims at presenting the results of a study on the plane and spherical covariance functions in determining gravimetric geoid models.

Effect of oat bran on time to exhaustion, glycogen content and serum cytokine profile following exhaustive exercise

The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of oat bran supplementation on time to exhaustion, glycogen stores and cytokines in rats submitted to training. The animals were divided into 3 groups: sedentary control group (C), an exercise group that received a control chow (EX) and an exercise group that received a chow supplemented with oat bran (EX-O). Exercised groups were submitted to an eight weeks swimming training protocol. In the last training session, the animals performed exercise to exhaustion, (e.g. incapable to continue the exercise). After the euthanasia of the animals, blood, muscle and hepatic tissue were collected. Plasma cytokines and corticosterone were evaluated. Glycogen concentrations was measured in the soleus and gastrocnemius muscles, and liver. Glycogen synthetase-alpha gene expression was evaluated in the soleus muscle. Statistical analysis was performed using a factorial ANOVA. Time to exhaustion of the EX-O group was 20% higher (515 +/- 3 minutes) when compared with EX group (425 +/- 3 minutes) (p = 0.034). For hepatic glycogen, the EX-O group had a 67% higher concentrations when compared with EX (p = 0.022). In the soleus muscle, EX-O group presented a 59.4% higher glycogen concentrations when compared with EX group (p = 0.021). TNF-alpha was decreased, IL-6, IL-10 and corticosterone increased after exercise, and EX-O presented lower levels of IL-6, IL-10 and corticosterone levels in comparison with EX group. It was concluded that the chow rich in oat bran increase muscle and hepatic glycogen concentrations. The higher glycogen storage may improve endurance performance during training and competitions, and a lower post-exercise inflammatory response can accelerate recovery.

Quantum statistical correlations in thermal field theories: Boundary effective theory

We show that the one-loop effective action at finite temperature for a scalar field with quartic interaction has the same renormalized expression as at zero temperature if written in terms of a certain classical field phi(c), and if we trade free propagators at zero temperature for their finite-temperature counterparts. The result follows if we write the partition function as an integral over field eigenstates (boundary fields) of the density matrix element in the functional Schrodinger field representation, and perform a semiclassical expansion in two steps: first, we integrate around the saddle point for fixed boundary fields, which is the classical field phi(c), a functional of the boundary fields; then, we perform a saddle-point integration over the boundary fields, whose correlations characterize the thermal properties of the system. This procedure provides a dimensionally reduced effective theory for the thermal system. We calculate the two-point correlation as an example.

Phase transitions and spatially ordered counterion association in ionic-lipid membranes: A statistical model

We propose a statistical model to account for the gel-fluid anomalous phase transitions in charged bilayer- or lamellae-forming ionic lipids. The model Hamiltonian comprises effective attractive interactions to describe neutral-lipid membranes as well as the effect of electrostatic repulsions of the discrete ionic charges on the lipid headgroups. The latter can be counterion dissociated (charged) or counterion associated (neutral), while the lipid acyl chains may be in gel (low-temperature or high-lateral-pressure) or fluid (high-temperature or low-lateral-pressure) states. The system is modeled as a lattice gas with two distinct particle types-each one associated, respectively, with the polar-headgroup and the acyl-chain states-which can be mapped onto an Ashkin-Teller model with the inclusion of cubic terms. The model displays a rich thermodynamic behavior in terms of the chemical potential of counterions (related to added salt concentration) and lateral pressure. In particular, we show the existence of semidissociated thermodynamic phases related to the onset of charge order in the system. This type of order stems from spatially ordered counterion association to the lipid headgroups, in which charged and neutral lipids alternate in a checkerboard-like order. Within the mean-field approximation, we predict that the acyl-chain order-disorder transition is discontinuous, with the first-order line ending at a critical point, as in the neutral case. Moreover, the charge order gives rise to continuous transitions, with the associated second-order lines joining the aforementioned first-order line at critical end points. We explore the thermodynamic behavior of some physical quantities, like the specific heat at constant lateral pressure and the degree of ionization, associated with the fraction of charged lipid headgroups.

Statistical models of mixtures with a biaxial nematic phase

We consider a simple Maier-Saupe statistical model with the inclusion of disorder degrees of freedom to mimic the phase diagram of a mixture of rodlike and disklike molecules. A quenched distribution of shapes leads to a phase diagram with two uniaxial and a biaxial nematic structure. A thermalized distribution, however, which is more adequate to liquid mixtures, precludes the stability of this biaxial phase. We then use a two-temperature formalism, and assume a separation of relaxation times, to show that a partial degree of annealing is already sufficient to stabilize a biaxial nematic structure.

TESTING STATISTICAL HYPOTHESIS ON RANDOM TREES AND APPLICATIONS TO THE PROTEIN CLASSIFICATION PROBLEM

Efficient automatic protein classification is of central importance in genomic annotation. As an independent way to check the reliability of the classification, we propose a statistical approach to test if two sets of protein domain sequences coming from two families of the Pfam database are significantly different. We model protein sequences as realizations of Variable Length Markov Chains (VLMC) and we use the context trees as a signature of each protein family. Our approach is based on a Kolmogorov-Smirnov-type goodness-of-fit test proposed by Balding et at. [Limit theorems for sequences of random trees (2008), DOI: 10.1007/s11749-008-0092-z]. The test statistic is a supremum over the space of trees of a function of the two samples; its computation grows, in principle, exponentially fast with the maximal number of nodes of the potential trees. We show how to transform this problem into a max-flow over a related graph which can be solved using a Ford-Fulkerson algorithm in polynomial time on that number. We apply the test to 10 randomly chosen protein domain families from the seed of Pfam-A database (high quality, manually curated families). The test shows that the distributions of context trees coming from different families are significantly different. We emphasize that this is a novel mathematical approach to validate the automatic clustering of sequences in any context. We also study the performance of the test via simulations on Galton-Watson related processes.

The production of school numbers (1871-1931): contributions to a critical approach to statistical sources in History of Education

This article intends to contribute to the reflection on the Educational Statistics as being source for the researches on History of Education. The main concern was to reveal the way Educational Statistics related to the period from 1871 to 1931 were produced, in central government. Official reports - from the General Statistics Directory - and Statistics yearbooks released by that department were analyzed and, on this analysis, recommendations and definitions to perform the works were sought. By rending problematic to the documental issues on Educational Statistics and their usual interpretations, the intention was to reduce the ignorance about the origin of the school numbers, which are occasionally used in current researches without the convenient critical exam.

Validity and reliability of the Portuguese version of the Epilepsy Medication Treatment Complexity Index for Brazil

We evaluated the reliability and validity of a Brazilian-Portuguese version of the Epilepsy Medication Treatment Complexity Index (EMTCI). Interrater reliability was evaluated with the intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC), and validity was evaluated by correlation of mean EMTCI scores with the following variables: number of antiepileptic drugs (AEDs), seizure control, patients` perception of seizure control, and adherence to the therapeutic regimen as measured with the Morisky scale. We studied patients with epilepsy followed in a tertiary university-based hospital outpatient clinic setting, aged 18 years or older, independent in daily living activities, and without cognitive impairment or active psychiatric disease. ICCs ranged from 0.721 to 0.999. Mean EMTCI scores were significantly correlated with the variables assessed. Higher EMTCI scores were associated with an increasing number of AEDs, uncontrolled seizures, patients` perception of lack of seizure control, and poorer adherence to the therapeutic regimen. The results indicate that the Brazilian-Portuguese EMTCI is reliable and valid to be applied clinically in the country. The Brazilian-Portuguese EMTCI version may be a useful tool in developing strategies to minimize treatment complexity, possibly improving seizure control and quality of life in people with epilepsy in our milieu. (C) 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Effect of eight weeks of strength training on fatigue resistance in men and women

The purpose of the present study was to compare the effects of eight weeks of strength training on fatigue resistance in men and women. Thirty-three men and twenty-three women performed eight weeks of strength training in three weekly sessions. Subjects performed four sets using 80% of 1-RM tests on bench press, squat and arm curl. Fatigue index (FI) was used for analysis of decline in motor performance along the sets. The sum of the number of repetitions accomplished in the four sets in each exercise was used to indicate the fatigue resistance. Anova or Ancova two-way ( time x gender) was employed for statistical analysis ( P < 0.05). Eight weeks of strength training increased significantly 1-RM strength, fatigue resistance and total number of repetitions in both genders. FI decreased significantly in both genders after training ( men = 50% vs. women = Time x gender interaction was observed in the total number of repetitions in squat ( P = 0.04) and arm curl exercises, regarding gains to women ( P = 0.01). In conclusion, eight weeks of ST improved strength, FR, FI and total number of repetitions performed. However, women obtained greater adaptations than men.

Performance of body fat and body mass index cutoffs in elevated blood pressure screening among male children and adolescents

For percentage of body fat (%BF), there are no internationally accepted cutoffs. The primary function of body fat cutoffs should be to identify not only excessive body fatness, but also the increased risk of unhealthy outcomes, such as hypertension. The purpose of this study was to analyze the accuracy of different %BF and body mass index (BMI) cutoffs as screening measures for EBP in pediatric populations. It was a cross-sectional study with a sample of 358 male subjects from 8 to 18 years old. BP was measured by the oscilometric method, and body composition was measured by dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA). The accuracy of three reference tables used for body fat cutoffs was assessed. The three body fat reference tables were highly specific, but insensitive, for elevated BP screening. For elevated BP screening, all body fat cutoffs presented similar sensitivity (range=48.3-53.7%) and specificity (range=79.2-84.1%). The body fat cutoffs performed no better than BMI in screening of children and adolescents at risk of elevated BP (EBP). BMI seems a more attractive tool for this function, as it performed similarly and can be applied in large surveys and with lower costs. Hypertension Research (2011) 34, 963-967; doi:10.1038/hr.2011.61; published online 26 May 2011